Ketcheson.net

• aggregate, collaborate, participate… | The BuzzMonitor
  This is an awesome tool, made available by the World Bank under a GPL.

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Yeah, I know I haven’t updated the blog in awhile….
Truth be told, I spend more time on my Facebook profile than on the blog, these days.  If you know me, look me up.

I’m on holidays for two weeks, so don’t expect to hear much from me online.

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• YouTube - The Wind
  A great ad.

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• James Fallows on search engines
  Interesting hypothesis. Thanks, trav.

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• Amazon.com: The World Without Us: Books: Alan Weisman
  On my wishlist.
  (tags: gifts_for_me)
• The Chanterelle Project - Mycelium Player - Advancing democracy through new media.
  Neat. Slicing up Question Period. h/t to Michael Geist.

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Lots of chatter these days about how/why Facebook is changing the Net.  (Mathew Ingram has a round-up of recent activity)

Me, I’ve been too busy updating my Facebook profile to read much of anything these days.

I’ve be trying to understand if Facebook is a force for good or evil on the Net, or if it is just a passing thing.

One little factoid has me believing that something profound in the history of the Web is going on.

Here it is: My wife is from a town of 600 people in Western Ontario.  There is a Facebook group for those with an affinity for the town.  It has 250 members.

Obviously, not all are residents, but there are at least 250 people with an interest in what goes on there, “gathered” in one place.  That is significant. That’s almost equal to half the population of the whole frickin’ town.

That kind of deep penetration into the general population (yes, skewed young of course) is something we haven’t seen on the Web to-date.  It will change things.

But, more profoundly, what we are seeing is the emergence of a new kind of social interaction online.  Think of it as an Intranet for the rest of us.

Before Facebook, most online information has floated in two spheres:

1) E-mail - a solitary medium best used for person-to-person or small group communication.  E-mail commands significant attention, rendering it quite initimate.  The expectation for e-mail conversations is that they are private, and shared only between the sender and recipients.  While mass forwards do happen, this is outside the norm.  The result is that most e-mail traffic ends up locked up in mailbox files for historians to one day comb through.

2) The Googlable Web - a completely public medium where there are no secrets, and where information lives forever.  Post once and regret it forever.  Individuals and corporations have to protect their identity and beware of costly mistakes.  There is no eraser.

Now, with Facebook we have a “third place”, to borrow and twist a phrase.

Some have lamented the fact that Facebook is creating a closed space, arguing that this is a return to the ugly days of AOL’s “walled garden”.

On the contrary, this is the beauty of Facebook. We feel we have created a safe(r) space where we have more freedom to muse, post embarrassing photos, be silly, and interact more freely. We feel safe from the ever-searching eye of Google; we feel safe that our potential or current employers won’t fire us based on an errant post or unfortunate photo; and we are more comfortable giving our acquaintances and long-lost friends a slice of our attention.  

(Keep in mind that this is an assumption that will be proved wrong on many occasions, and will result in heaps of media coverage.  The days of the “forwarded e-mail bites person in butt” stories are gone, and will be replaced with “he added the friend from hell to his Facebook and that bit him in the butt” stories.) 

And, we can reap benefits from adding to our Facebook friends list, without having to sacrifice the attention that would be required if we began an e-mail correspondence.

What is amazing to me is that a lot of the benefits of Facebook feel like what an Intranet should be: a place to collaborate, experiment, make connections, and share information, all without sacrificing large slices of our attention.

And that is the secret of its success, and I would hazard a guess, its long-term value: It is a social Intranet for the rest of us.

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• Direct2Dell - Dell’s Blog
  Lionel goes all out with Dell’s “23 confessions” in response to a very bad incident with Consumerist. Well done, guys. Once again you are showing us all how to do crisis communications and good PR.

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• Common-Nature » Blog Archive » DMD presentation: The case for social media in state government
  Another public service blogger, this time in the Missouri state government
• Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog : May 22 - June 27, 2007
  The is the best use of a blog in a government environment that I have yet to see. Think about what this means for outreach, engagement, and communications
  (tags: deckfodder governmentblogging)
• When HHS Blogs, It’s A Blowout | TPMCafe
  I stand corrected. Note this criticism. Key point is that the policymakers are not responding. That is what sticks in their collective craw.
  (tags: deckfodder)

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• SacredFacts: Facebook
  Proof Facebook has arrived….There are 10,000 members of the BBC group, for which you need to have a BBC e-mail address.

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• This is going to be BIG! - Hey Austin for Edwards, please do not spam my del.icio.us for: account
  One of my 2007 predictions
  (tags: predictions)

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